Allow yourself to feel joy; it’s heroic
It’s our imagination that can save us in these dark and lonely times
I am not used to joy. I think joy requires a great deal of imagination. I am forty-two years old now, and will be forty-three soon. Every year life changes and I have to adjust, to arrange and rearrange. Life becomes a bit narrow sometimes and other times it widens. Whatever life is, at the time, I try not to forget the things that don’t change, or how it requires an imagination to think of joy, and to feel joy.
When I look out the window, down seven levels to the street, I don’t see anyone. It is strange in this part of town. It is downtown Toronto, near the Scotiabank Theatre. I can hear through the walls, cheer. It is the cheer of one person. It’s the Raptors and they are on television. This part of town, a year ago, you would never be able to count how many people on the street there were. Actually, you would not think to count at all. Now, there’s one, two, and it takes a while before you find a third person to count.
Right now, the province has declared a state of emergency. We can only go to the pharmacy or to the drugstore. We must wear masks and stay six feet apart. Can’t be in an enclosed space with anyone we don’t live with. It’s also snowing today. Not a light snow that melts and disappears once it hits the ground. It’s the kind that stays, that piles up. The kind you can gather up and form a snowball and throw it. The snow hasn’t changed. I remember the first time I saw snow. My parents landed in Canada. They called snow ice cubes. It was the closest thing they knew to water being frozen. Ice cubes. They didn’t know you have to dress properly now that you will live in a country that has so much ice cubes. I arrived barefoot. We were met at the airport. Introduced to our sponsors. Strangers to us, really.
It is amazing to me to think of all there was in the world, it was a stranger that saved us. It wasn’t family. Same thing today. It’s what strangers do that helps. They are staying home, working from home.
The sun isn’t out today. It is behind clouds. There is light, but it isn’t warm. It’s just enough to see, to know where you are, to mark the time of day. It will set soon. That doesn’t change, the sun. It is always there. It is we, depending on where we are in the world, that turns away from it.
A friend called me and we talked about wanting to travel. Anywhere there is a beach and sunshine. We imagine the food we will eat. How I will be encouraged to order everything on the menu. “Yeah, yeah … get that one, too!” I go for a walk. I see people, but I can’t tell you what they look like. They wear masks. No one can tell you what I look like because I am wearing a mask, too. It’s hard to tell if they are friendly. It used to be that you can smile to let someone know you mean no harm, that you are friendly. It’s hard, too, to communicate with someone in a car who wants to make a right turn. I always wave them to go, or I point across the street to let them know I would like to go there, and I would appreciate if I would be allowed to walk across.
I am thinking of the summer. The next time I will get to see a baseball game at the Sky Dome. I know we don’t call that building that anymore.
I remember what a big deal it was when it was first built. I couldn’t stop drawing the CN Tower and the dome together. A landmark, a horizon, I could make over and over. It is the one place you can go to sit with a crowd and cheer for the same thing. And it costs only $10. I want to stand up and do this thing called “the wave.” I am the person who likes to ruin it by not joining in, or joining in long before it has passed, or joining in too early.
I talked to my friend on the phone. Three hours. It is like being in grade seven again. We have to tell each other everything we did that day. Recount and describe the day. Her voice is the same, and so is her laughter. Sometimes we get caught up in our talk and we forget the world and what’s happened. I look out the window again. I see a building I used to work in. A big bank. I used to work five levels below the ground there. I look at the CN Tower, how it has lights now. When I was younger, you couldn’t see that tower in the dark.
It seems silly to think of laughter, of people walking in the streets, travel, food, a baseball game, sunlight, cheering, the voice of a friend, in a pandemic. There is a difference between hope and imagination. I like imagination. You know it isn’t there, that thing you hope for, but you have and hold it in your mind. No one can destroy your imagination. It takes imagination to think of those things and to feel joy for them. That I can imagine, can think of the bright and warm sun when there isn’t one today, is grand. It gets me to the next minute, the next hour, the next day, and it gives me a future. Whoever we are, wherever we are from, it doesn’t cost anything to imagine. It is how we get by and get on.
This is what my parents had, too. Their imagination. They are ordinary people. But if you knew they built a raft of bamboo to get to a refugee camp, you might think they were heroic. It was their ability to imagine the future, beyond the idea of what we were being told — that nobody wanted us. It wasn’t heroic. Think of the new perfume you want to try, the delicious food, the popcorn in the theatre. Think of clothes and outfits you want to put together. Lipstick. Think of shoes and the sound they make in the hallway, on the floor, in the street. Think of a hug. Think of fancy fabric you want to touch and shiny jewelry to wear. Think of a vacation. Think of ice cream and pizza. Think of a date, meeting someone who will love you. It’s heroic.
I like imagination.
You know it isn’t there, that thing you hope for, but you have and hold it in your mind